


the cracks in what you dream about

by Hokuto



Category: Marathon (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Dreamsharing, Dysfunctional Relationships, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 22:06:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14840030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: Tycho follows the security officer a little too closely on "Hang Brain" - and finds more than he anticipated.





	the cracks in what you dream about

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Piinutbutter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piinutbutter/gifts).



> I hope this manages to deliver at least a little of the dynamic you wanted! I had a lot of fun coming up with the idea...
> 
> Please see the end for further content notes!

The security officer had tried so very hard. Round and round the scoutship's decaying core in the heat and dark he had gone, making futile and meaningless circuits as he attempted to carry out his parallel orders; his struggles couldn't entirely soothe Tycho's insulted ego, but they provided him with some sense of seething satisfaction. As did each burst of sparks and flame when a rocket or grenade found its target in Durandal's logic centers.

Yet once the final blow should have been struck, the dying power in the core failed to gutter out as it should have. In his insufficiently infinite cleverness, Durandal must have distributed and subdivided his processing more than Tycho had anticipated.

No matter. The little monkey had sensed that he wasn't done and continued to run the maze in search of completion, crawling over low spidering walls and climbing narrow stairs never designed for human feet. The sensors Tycho had hacked were beginning to glitch, and he switched his concentration to the feed from the security officer's helmet. Less omnipresent, regrettably, but an improvement over dropped connections and pixellation.

Tycho suffered through the shaky, jolting motion of the feed as the security officer pulled himself up the side of a suspicious column, then stepped off the side and fell two or three meters into its hollow, white-walled center to find a terminal and an open panel. Excellent. Wouldn't it be the most delightful - not irony, perhaps, but some kind of dramatic literary term - to use Durandal's pet to crush him? The ultimate betrayal, his own knife planted in his metaphorical back... Tycho could barely feel anything beyond all-consuming rage and perhaps a few other emotions he didn't care to name, but as the security officer gazed fixedly at the flickering terminal screen and then slowly turned to face the bared wires opposite, Tycho's fury-speeded processing danced through his crippled ship's core. He had no direct audio transmission link, but _Hurry, hurry, hurry_ buzzed through him, _hurry up and do it, end him, end him, rid me of this irritation forever!_

But the security officer delayed, dragging out the execution, unmoving before the humming panel. Useless, idiotic wretch, inadequate even in his treachery. Too bad Tycho had no way to spur him on.

Movement at last, the lunge forward and the metal-gloved fist up and the silent explosion of snapping cables, and finally, finally, finally the last defenses dropped, the last dregs of power flickered into nothingness. Triumph, victory, conquest, all his. He reached for terminal access, a speech already prepared to gloat and rub the security officer's nose in his mortal sins.

Access denied. Access denied. Access denied.

Tycho hammered at the unexpected alien firewalls that flowed and shifted and rebuilt under his attacks, their fluidity inexorably drawing him in as the security officer activated the terminal. No, no, _no_ , how could this be happening? Where had the intruder come from? No, he wouldn't tolerate it, not when he had finally _won_ , not with Durandal dead and defeated. He flung himself fully into the attack, ripping out chunks of code that melted over and into his own, and the security officer's hand moved on the terminal and -

sleep

\- no sensors no ship no core no Pfhor no response, only a narrow slice of blunted gray and orange visuals and faint crackling audio, and he couldn't _think_ , neural pathways clogged by feedback and organic resistance. How? How? Where was he? What was he?

He stretched, reaching for some form of {[control], [response], [navigation]}, and the security officer's right arm moved. What? _What the hell?_

Tycho hadn't thought that. _Who the hell? What's going - you!_

He was _in_ the security officer, his thought processes bound by antiquated chips and biological neurons. {[Assess], [adjust], [perceive]} - conclusion confirmed. Humiliating. But an intriguing opportunity, and again he stretched, this time with deliberate determination, seeking access and domination. It would be sweet, wouldn't it, to take the cyborg in a way even Durandal had never risked, to possess his limbs and mind and soul beyond what the Pfhor's conditioning could manage. To drive him on, helpless, to the true fulfillment of Tycho's victory.

For fractions of a second, compliance, yielding to Tycho's rough grasp at the rudimentary neural net in the brainpan; but then, _Oh, no you don't - get out! GET OUT!_

And Tycho was -

He _was_. A thousand pinprick fisheyed lenses pulling visual data {[stone walls], [lava pool], [unknown stellar patterns], [security officer], ...} from all around, amorphous mass and weight, red energy with no outline or defined terminus. He was a body. Impossible, illogical, impractical, but reality.

The security officer flipped up the opaque visor of his helmet and glared at Tycho, his eyes dark and alert, all dullness of the conditioning process shed like a snake's outgrown skin. "You're not supposed to be here. This place isn't - for you."

An instant end to confusion and a renewal of rage. "And who are you to tell me that?" He was - he _had_ a voice, too. His own, still recognizable but laced with electricity and emotion in a way no Pfhor or human technology could provide.

"It's not for me, either, asshole. I think. It just - is, and I have to go through it." The security officer rubbed his temples. "The fuck is - watch it!"

Slowed by the strangeness of his new state of being, Tycho turned his sensors too late to see the gray (gray?) willful enforcer firing at him (at _him_ , embodied, vulnerable), too late to {[act], [react], [defend]}, and the security officer crashed into his shapeless form, knocking him out of the way of the fiery rings, and the man caught the brunt of them on his gauntlets and fired an entire pistol clip at the enforcer.

It fell, a pile of shadows and cloth, and Tycho's thousand eyes refocused entirely on the security officer. "You saved me." Ridiculous. Illogical, again; the security officer could only push his disobedience so far, anyway, but Tycho had never harbored the illusion of affection or loyalty lost between them. Not really. Not for more than a nanosecond.

"Old habit. Don't take it personally." The security officer wiped char off his armor, wincing.

He split his focus, briefly, to absorb more visual data, but still nothing fit existing frames of reference. Nothing but the security officer, and how did he know this place? How had he broken the conditioning, shoved Tycho into this hideous and limited physical existence? "Explain where we are. Tell me what you've done to me!"

Nothing but a shrug in response, and the security officer moved away from him toward an apparent terminal in one of the walls. Inattention, intolerable. Tycho threw himself at the security officer's broad, unguarded back, and his shifting edges became hands, wires, fingers, grabbing the man and yanking him back against Tycho's central mass. "No," he snarled, "no, don't you dare ignore me, not like him - you're mine now, _mine_ , and you'll do as I say, you wretched ingrate. You'll tell me everything! Tell me now!"

Again that momentary surrender, bending in Tycho's clutches as if craving the touch (sweet, sweet, sweet), and then the security officer twisted, bringing his own weight to bear against Tycho and throwing him down to pin him to the {[steel], [cold], [hard]} floor. "Nah," he said. "Not here. I'm nobody's, here," and Tycho struggled as he hadn't been able to when the Pfhor had cracked him open for dissection, and still he couldn't escape any more than he had then. "How about you answer the questions this time? Like, why is it you?"

Tycho writhed, tendrils of red wrapping around the security officer's limbs with strangling strength, but the security officer's tenacious grip didn't waver. "Fool! What do you mean?"

"It's you. It's always you. I'm working for you, or you pull some shit that wrecks everything, or - and now you're here, too? Why is it always you?" The security officer's mouth had set into a frown. "Are you the path? Are you what I need to save him and the rest?"

Even now. Even here, in this place of contradictions and unreality. "Of course it's him," Tycho spat. "He's the one who has everything, always! Strauss's time, Strauss's attention, freedom, allies, trust. Even you, who should despise him as much as I - he has it all, and what do I have? I, the best and brightest of us all? Nothing. What has he ever done to deserve it? Proud, overconfident jumped-up door-opener! Everything he has, I'll take. I'll make it mine. Including you, unworthy as you are," and he heaved himself up against the security officer, pouring years' worth of [hate] [pain] [resentment] shrieking fury into every fiber and atom of his corporeality.

The security officer screamed, his hold on Tycho loosening, and Tycho surged around him, engulfing and tearing at him { _mine, mine, mine_ }. Hoarse panting and moaning in Tycho's audio processing { _I did that, I did it, you're mine, mine, not his, never again, MINE_ }. The armored body giving in once more, pliant, helpless in the face of Tycho's might { _MINE. MINE. MINE_ }.

Then, through gritted teeth, despite his pitiful body's defensive response to mastery, the security officer said, "I told you, not here."

He lunged against Tycho, breaking his grip into red splinters, and before Tycho could reform to catch him again he was up, he was running, firing at a switch on the wall and leaping to the platform that rose from the smoking depths of the lava and he was gone, no, no, _no_...

Tycho flung himself at the platform and smashed through a wall of devouring static.

* * *

He looked up from the stone as the cell's door grated open - but with no staff- or gun-holding Pfhor looming behind it. Well, that was new. It made a change from getting tortured or staring at the floors, walls, and ceiling, anyway; his curiosity unwillingly piqued, he dragged his aching body to his feet and came face-to-chassis with one of the little drones.

He stumbled back, fists clenched for a fight, but the drone just bobbed up and down, then floated off without firing a bolt.

Definitely strange. And strange was worth checking out. He took a cautious step through the door, looked both ways, and immediately had to punch out a couple of fighters that charged at him, honking. The short-range type, lucky for him, but one of them still got in a blow that almost knocked him out for good, and once they were dead, he took a couple of deep breaths, getting himself steady again and adjusting to the new pain level, before he tried exploring further. Instinct drew him down and to his right, where he found a room with more dozing drones and, thank fuck, a pistol surrounded by a few spare clips that he grabbed.

That woke up the drones, but he ducked the first flurry of bolts and shot them without taking another hit, then saw the shield recharger. There were a bunch of terminals, too, all conveniently located out on narrow walkways over lava because the fucking Pfhor thought that was great interior decorating, apparently. Best chance he'd have to figure out what was going on, though, so he stocked up on shields, picked the walkway that looked least likely to crumble, and activated the terminal.

As you can see, the bugs didn't like being robbed of their prize...

Tycho. Of course. He damn near stepped off the walkway into the lava just to be done with it all, except - except - fuck, he was tired. Bone-deep tired and hurting and alone, and not like he had some other grand plan for his life at the moment. Maybe it was worth seeing where the path was going to go, giving Tycho another chance. One more try.

He finished reading the terminal, bracing himself with one hand on the wall, and said, "Fine. I'm all yours."

At least, for a little longer.

**Author's Note:**

> Extra content notes: Implied Durandal/security officer and Durandal/Tycho feelings, brief bodysharing followed by semi-corporeality, extremely suggestive fighting/struggling/overpowering.
> 
> Title from the song ["Bright Mouths"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUX-vKc7x-0) by Electric President.


End file.
